Read this in Hindustan time's Inner voice.....found it very relevant to the day to day expectations we have out of just about anyone who matters to us...The experiment suggested at the end really is worth trying..... we wont be able to rid ourselves of expectations completely( we are afterall human)......but trying to atleast lower our expectations is something we all could try.


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Published on March 02 2006,Page 11



INNER VOICE - Great expectations
ATUL Tandon



IT'S HUMAN nature to expect even the unexpected from others. This is irrespective of whether a particular person can make it happen or not, which in turn is the root cause of all the grievances that we face in daily life. If the expectations are fulfilled, we are the happiest persons alive, otherwise we are badly hurt. We don't even try to understand what exactly might have happened. The other person might have tried his or her best to please us but sometimes things don't work out as desired. And so we assume that the concerned person does not care for us. Isn't that too harsh on our part?


Let me share a brief story that I read when I was in the 12th standard, which had a lasting impact on me. It's about a fog horn which was mounted to warn ships at sea of the fog. Once the operator's friend visited him. The operator told him that in the month of December a creature came up from the depth of the sea to call to the fog horn and expected the horn to respond again.


The operator obligingly blew the fog horn. Everything was fine until the operator stopped blowing horn. The creature cried like anything but nobody responded. Ultimately out of sheer anger it destroyed the fog horn. The operator somehow escaped. Obviously, the poor creature had mistaken the fog horn for its companion. So it expected the fog horn to respond when desired. When this didn't happen, it started hating the fog horn and ultimately became the cause of its destruction.


In one of the recent movies (Kyonki) Salman Khan, who is shown mentally sick, responds to the voice of a bird. He gets irritated when the bird stops responding. Even here it's expectation that causes trouble.


To apply this theory, one needs to do a small experiment. For one whole week, don't expect anything from anybody. You won't be hurt for that whole week since you had no expectations from others. Complete happiness will follow.

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There is no key to happiness.... the door is always open.